Hatfield career detour leads to Wyo as first mathematics excellence chair

Larry Hatfield

   Larry Hatfield wasn't looking to add a chapter to an already long and distinguished career as a mathematics education professor when the University of Wyoming called.

   In fact, he had chapters of a different type planned for his future: a first novel headed to publication and a science fiction trilogy partially written. Larry and his wife, Carolyn, envisioned those next chapters and the next chapters of their lives being written at their existing home in Athens, Ga., and a recently purchased retirement property in Maine.

   But the University of Wyoming did call, encouraging Hatfield to apply for the legislatively-funded Wyoming Excellence Chair in Mathematics Education. Hatfield reconsidered, placed his name into consideration for the prestigious endowed faculty position, and eventually committed to a Laramie-based detour of his retirement plans.

   Hatfield's academic service has spanned more than 40 years at the University of Georgia and includes two years as a program director at the National Science Foundation. He helped launch and guide UGA's doctoral mathematics education degree to prominence at the top of the nation's programs.  Still, Wyoming's fledgling doctoral program had great appeal.

   "It was pretty clear that this was a significant opportunity," he recalls thinking about the UW faculty visions for a new program and the role that the endowed professorship would play. " I was so deeply impressed with what I found here at the university."

   Hatfield acknowledges that with the opportunity comes responsibility for innovation and creating a national and international leadership role for the University of Wyoming.

   "We can't retrace the well-worn figure-eights of the past," he says.

   Early movement toward greater public visibility is beginning with the formation of a multidisciplinary team that will focus on studying mathematical experience.

   "Historically, scholarship in our field has focused on learning, achievement, teaching effectiveness on evaluating and assessing," Hatfield says. "Yet when you read our literature that calls for certain kinds of things to happen in the curriculum and in effective teaching, ideas about mathematical experiences and the quality of mathematical experience are all over the place. Yet we know very little about how individuals perceive the actual experiences they have in mathematics."

   Faculty members on the new research team from secondary education, elementary education and mathematics have begun planning a ground-breaking, UW-based research agenda.

   "This is a fertile opportunity for us to explore a domain in which there is little to no research-based knowledge," Larry explains.

   Unlocking the ways in which various mathematical experiences impact students' capacity to engage and learn mathematics and often carry with them through adulthood could represent a significant contribution to our knowledge for educating in mathematics, according to Hatfield.

   "If we come to understand more clearly what students are actually experiencing, when we try to teach mathematics and they try to learn mathematics, teachers will be better informed about how to approach students, how to interact with students, how to look for the cues and the clues that students will express that reveal what's really occurring in them which is experiential in nature," he says.

    Hatfield's early agenda includes other initiatives of note. The Wyoming Institute for the Study and Development of Mathematical Education will be a virtual program designed to promote and solicit collaborative research teams worldwide. While the primary collaborative activities of WISDOM^e will take place online, it also will bring participants to Laramie for an annual research reporting and planning conference. UW faculty and doctoral students will define and articulate the research domains and facilitate online connections and interactions among researchers around the world.

   Another major initiative that Hatfield plans to establish early is an academy for promising mathematics students. It will offer a range of services for  mathematically able and motivated Wyoming students and their parents, stimulating and supporting academic development opportunities that may not be possible via the resources available in the student's locale. A professional development component for the students' teachers also will be built in, enhancing the support system. The program's purpose is to help the student "stay academically alive" and increase the likelihood that he or she will deepen and maintain an interest in mathematics in the future.

Posted on Tuesday, September 22, 2009